It is becoming increasingly more common for small offices/home offices (SOHO environments) to deploy plain old telephone service (POTS) enabled customer premise equipment (CPE), which may also be referred to as a “voice gateway.” In such environments, POTS port line tests must to be carried out locally, at the CPE, rather than from the local exchange as in the legacy technique.
Some CPEs support POTS line testing, but testing must be initiated from, for example, an operator or possibly an end user (subscriber). This assumes that the subscriber/operator is aware of a problem with a POTS-line. Since these problems often are dormant, the subscriber won't recognize a problem until he/she tries to use a phone connected to the CPE. The Telcordia GR-909-CORE specification describes a series of tests to be carried out on POTS-lines. However, the references used for comparison to determine whether there is a problem with a POTS-line are fixed, which can lead to excessive false positives and/or false negatives.
What is desired are improved systems and methods that overcome at least some of the above described disadvantages.